Germany was in mourning yesterday after a teenage gunman ran amok at a school and the local area, killing at least 15 people and finally himself in a shootout with police.
The 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer on Wednesday burst into his former secondary school in Winnenden, a picturesque town in southern Germany, and opened fire, leaving nine pupils aged between 15 and 16 and three teachers dead.
Another three bystanders also died during a massive manhunt involving hundreds of armed police commandos and snipers in black body armor, assisted by helicopters and dogs.
Less than three hours after the killing spree began, the gunman eventually turned his weapon on himself after being injured in a fire-fight with police, bringing the death toll to 16.
A visibly shaken German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the crime as “incomprehensible.”
“It is a day of mourning for the whole of Germany. Our thoughts go out to the families and the friends. We are thinking of you and we are praying for you,” she said.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble ordered flags across Germany to be flown at half mast yesterday as a mark of respect for the slain. Church services took place on Wednesday in the town, which has a population around 27,000.
The slaughter started at 9:30am when Kretschmer entered the school he left last year, pulled out his 9mm pistol and began his bloody rampage.
“He was constantly reloading his weapon,” local police chief Konrad Gelden told reporters.
“He just opened the door, pulled out his gun and started shooting,” one pupil said on German television. “One person saw someone shot in the head.”
“My brother was in the classroom in which it happened,” another said. “He was sitting next to his girlfriend and she was shot.”
Kretschmer went into classroom 10-D three times, the Bild daily said on its Web site, hissing on the third visit: “Aren’t you all dead yet?”
A teacher threw herself in front of a female pupil — and was shot by the gunman, Bild said.
All but one of the nine pupils killed at the school were girls, and the three teachers were women, said Heribert Rech, interior minister of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg where the slaughter took place.
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